International Workshop
28 May 2013 – 29 May 2013

Religion and Law. Religious Difference and the Problem of Religious Neutrality in Democratic Legal Cultures

Venue: ZfL, Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, 3. Et.
Contact: Dana Hollander, Martin Treml

Program

International Workshop convended by Dana Hollander (McMaster University), Stephan Steiner (ZfL) and Martin Treml (ZfL)

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

13.00–14.30
Martin Treml (ZfL): Greetings and Opening Remarks

Mirjam Künkler (Princeton)/Tine Stein (Kiel): Text Discussion: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Der säkularisierte Staat. Sein Charakter, seine Rechtfertigung und seine Probleme im 21. Jahrhundert/The Secularized State: Its Character, Justification, and Problems in the Twenty-First Century (2006)

Background Reading: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Die Entstehung des Staates als Vorgang der Säkularisation/The Emergence of the State as a Process of Secularization (1967)
Texts will be distributed to participants in advance, and extra copies will be on hand.

15.00–16.30
Ino Augsberg (München): Talking About Religion from a Legal Point of View. On Religious Self-Concepts and Why They Matter in Constitutional Context

Zaal Andronikashvili (ZfL): Feels Like Theocracy: Theological Politics of the Georgian Orthodox Church

17.00–18.30
Ernst Müller (ZfL): Friedrich Schleiermacher und die Debatte in Preußen um die Emanzipation der Juden (English summary available)

Volkhard Krech (Bochum): Religion and Law in the Perspective of Societal Differentiation

 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

13.30–15.00
Mirjam Künkler (Princeton): Religion and Democratization in the Muslim World

Hussein Ali Agrama (Chicago): Religious Neutrality and the Bind of Suspicion in Contemporary Secularity. The Case of Egypt

15.30–17.00
Hent de Vries (Johns Hopkins): Invocatio Dei and the European Constitution
(Paper to be delivered by Dana Hollander)

Yvonne Sherwood (Kent): ›Secular‹ Law and the Insurgent Poltergeist, ›Belief‹

This workshop assembles multiple scholarly perspectives on how Western and Western-style secular democracies and their legal cultures have taken account of religion—in particular religious difference, or the plurality of religions. The workshop will study the interactions of religious, cultural, and political phenomena transnationally and trans-religiously, as a way of focusing on cultural meanings and their conceptual implications: What does religion signify in secular democracy, and, by the same token, what does the secularity (or »religious neutrality«) of secular democracy consist of? How can we best understand the cultural-political-historical processes that led to current dilemmas involving religion, secularity, and law? How does the self-understanding of religions, in which civil life is often oriented to religious principles, impact such questions?

Related events ZfL semester theme: Religion and Representation Summer 2013

Abb.: Mishneh Torah, © British Library